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Israel’s prime minister vowed on Tuesday to push ahead with an offensive in the Gazan city of Rafah whether or not a ceasefire deal is reached with Hamas, as he held urgent talks with ministers and diplomats on the potential agreement.
“The idea that we will stop the war before achieving all of its goals is out of the question,” Benjamin Netanyahu told the families of fallen soldiers and hostages. “We will enter Rafah and eliminate the Hamas battalions there — with or without a deal, in order to achieve total victory.”
Israel has long threatened to attack the Palestinian militant group’s last stronghold in Gaza, where at least 1mn people have taken shelter. But an Egyptian and Qatari-brokered ceasefire proposal — which would halt the fighting in Gaza for an initial six weeks in exchange for the release of 33 Israeli hostages — would be likely to entail delaying the assault.
Mediators have become hopeful of a breakthrough in recent days after Israel appeared to soften its stance on important conditions that had previously stalled negotiations.
US secretary of state Antony Blinken, who is due to arrive in Israel on Tuesday for crunch talks about the potential deal, said on Monday in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, that Hamas had before it “a proposal that is extraordinarily generous on the part of Israel”.
Far-right politicians within Netanyahu’s ruling coalition, however, have threatened to bring down the government if the war in Gaza is halted, presenting a significant obstacle to any agreement.
Netanyahu on Tuesday held an urgent meeting with far-right national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who has opposed the most recent ceasefire-for-hostage proposal in recent days as has finance minister Bezalel Smotrich.
After the meeting, Ben-Gvir said in a video recorded from the prime minister’s office that he had “warned” the long-serving leader of the implications of not pushing into Rafah and ending the war as part of what he termed a “reckless deal”.
“I think the prime minister understands very well what [that] will mean,” Ben-Gvir added.
Both Smotrich’s Religious Zionist party and Ben-Gvir’s Jewish Power have enabled Netanyahu’s rightwing governing coalition to remain in power. Their resignations would mean the loss of the government’s parliamentary majority and could force the country into snap elections, analysts said.
Smotrich on Sunday threatened that if Netanyahu backed down on a Rafah offensive and failed to eliminate Hamas, “a government headed by you will have no right to exist”.
As part of the prospective deal, Israel would probably also need to further withdraw its forces from Gaza, allow displaced Palestinians to return to their homes in the northern part of the shattered territory and agree to release hundreds of Palestinians jailed in Israeli prisons.
Heaping more pressure on the long-serving premier, another member of the coalition, Benny Gantz, issued his own contrasting ultimatum on Sunday, warning Netanyahu that the fate of the 133 hostages still held by Hamas should take priority over an operation in Rafah.
“If a responsible proposal is reached for the return of the hostages . . . which does not involve the end of the war, and [Netanyahu’s other ministers] prevent it, the government will not have the right to continue to exist and lead the campaign [against Hamas],” Gantz, a centrist politician and former army chief, wrote on X on Sunday.
Gadi Eisenkot, a senior official in Gantz’s National Unity party, accused Ben-Gvir and Smotrich in a Facebook post of “carrying out political blackmail” that was harming Israeli national security.
Both Gantz and Eisenkot are members of the small war cabinet prosecuting the campaign against Hamas, and joined the Netanyahu coalition in the conflict’s first week last October.
“I will only be part of a government that makes decisions based on Israel’s national interests, and not [based on] political considerations,” Eisenkot wrote.